1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to: an image processing system in which an image forming apparatus such as a multifunctional digital machine also called as MFP (Multi Function Peripheral) and one or more than one image processing server are connected to each other via a network; an image processing server preferably employed in the image processing system; an image forming apparatus also preferably employed in the image processing system; an image processing method for the image processing system; and a recording medium with an image processing program being stored thereon to make a computer of the image processing server execute processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following description sets forth the inventor's knowledge of related art and problems therein and should not be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art.
As well as such an image processing system mentioned above which is configured to make an image forming apparatus perform all image processing operations on image data inputted to the image forming apparatus, there has been a suggested image processing system which is configured to make multiple external image processing servers cooperatively perform their own and different image processing operations on image data inputted to an image forming apparatus (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publications No. 2004-289500 and No. 2009-129340).
For example, such an image processing system is capable of making: an image processing server with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) function perform an OCR operation on image data obtained by scanning a document with a scanner of an image forming apparatus; an image processing server with translation function translate the recognized characters; and an image processing server with code merging function merge a QR code to the image data obtained by the translation. In such an image processing system which makes multiple image processing servers with specific functions cooperatively perform their specific operations individually, an image forming apparatus, whose resources are too limited to perform all image processing operations, does not have to employ a complex structure with the capability to perform all these functions, which is very advantageous.
And recently, there has been another suggested image processing system, which provides image processing services of various service suppliers via the Web so that users can select their preferred ones among them and obtain their target image via the Web, just like SaaS (Software as a Service).
However, the conventional image processing systems to make an external image processing server(s) perform image processing, including the technologies described in the above-introduced Japanese Unexamined Patent Publications No. 2004-289500 and No. 2009-129340, have the following disadvantage.
When multiple image processing servers cooperatively perform image processing operations on image data, the user has to be afraid if the image data could be processed to be an unintended form depending on the order of the image processing operations.
For example, a first image processing server merges an image pattern 101 such as a security code or a QR code to target image data 100 as illustrated in FIG. 19A, which is a conventional method to protect handout documents. However, there is a problem with the conventional method that if a second image processing server performs the next image processing operation after the code merging operation of the first image processing apparatus, the security code or the QR code might hardly be detected because of being unfavorably converted by the operation of the second image processing server as illustrated in FIG. 19B. There is another problem with the conventional method that the second image processing server might wrongly translate the security code 103 after the code merging operation of the first image processing apparatus, as illustrated in FIG. 19C.
Specifically from the aspect of document protection, security codes or QR codes have been used and needed in more cases for recent years; accordingly there will be increasing such problems as mentioned above.
The description herein of advantages and disadvantages of various features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed in other publications is in no way intended to limit the present invention. Indeed, certain features of the invention may be capable of overcoming certain disadvantages, while still retaining some or all of the features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed therein.